the-7-percent-solution:

euphoriccalliope:

ARG Meta. You know you want it.

So. Some of the most dedicated and responsive TJLC blogs are receiving anonymous asks that are enciphered cryptograms. **fondly leans out of window at epic ticker-tape parade, throws armfuls of confetti onto each

puzzle-solver and puzzle-tracker**  Some of these cryptograms seem to be coming from a person written in character as moriarty. When solved, these in turn have ties to other aspects of this ARG (alternate reality game) – tweets from the @contact_jm twitter account, for example. Possibly also ties to the thelostspecial.com website, which is somewhat quiet for now but may not remain that way.

TJLC Languishes in Prison; TPTB Baking Files in Cakes

I dunno whether this is relevant or might become so, but in case it is – I was just digging around learning about Victorian-era cryptography, and stumbled across this account of how ACD used the text of his own Sherlock Holmes stories as a means of communicating news from England to British POWs held in Germany during WWI. ACD was speaking at a convention dinner in 1921. A pamphlet describing the convention dinner speeches and events ended up in the British Library, and the keeper of the website at this link transcribed the relevant ACD info for the benefit of online Sherlockians in 2014. (X)

Bold emphasis mine, natch:

That Conan Doyle was familiar with this type of secret message transferal is
evident when during the Stoll Convention Dinner he reveals how he used this cipher to communicate with a friend by employing pinpricks underneath letters of his stories:

“My creation of Holmes did, after all, a small bit of war work. It is hardly worth mentioning, but I had a friend who was shut up in the Magdeburg Military Prison in Germany. As he and his brother officers were getting no news from England, I took a volume of Sherlock Holmes and in it I pricked out all the news letter by letter, beginning with the third chapter — pricking under each letter of the message with a needle I sent the book to him with a note saying: “This may relieve your prison captivity and afterwards be placed in the prison library. It is slow but perhaps you might find the third chapter to be a little more interesting.” I thought that would be good enough for him, but as a matter of fact he missed it. There was however, another officer, Capt. The Hon. Keppel, of the Guards who with extraordinary sagacity, “got on” to it. The result was that the British officers in captivity got the whole of the news of England at that time. I then got another letter saying “Please send us another Sherlock Holmes story.” I continued to send them with all the news pricked out in them to those officers until I learned that they were actually being allowed to have English newspapers, and then I desisted.”

What if We Get an Ur-Cipher?

We’ve all been on Prison Shutter Island since TFP, and hints within hints can get a gal down after three straight weeks of emotionally invested theorizing. The attention has become a shade annoying.The verifiably “real” cryptograms that are part of the ARG are possibly parts of a puzzle, but what is the end goal of the puzzle?

What if the end result of all of this cipher fuckery teamwork is a pattern we can then apply to the existing BBC show footage or shooting scripts to read/generate a completely different set of information than the one TPTB originally told?  This would not be as nice as having more video footage as a new episode, but given what I just read it in Doyle’s own words, I feel like this may come up at some point. Just theorizing here, but I had to mention it, because I like the elegance of Moftiss doing it flat-out. I mean, c’mon. How could they resist following in ACD’s footsteps, pinpricking their own canonical text to bring relief to beleaguered imprisoned friends longing for news? 

Since their medium is audiovisual, though, and not text, it doesn’t entirely make sense that they would limit themselves to the shooting scripts.  Maybe the end result will be a series of time stamps that the fandom can then edit into an alternate canon, perhaps using some additionally provided footage found along the way?

What Do You Think — Do We Make the Lost Special?

The fandom is already thinking of doing this anyway, or already doing it fast, through fix-it fic… not a huge leap. I’m still holding out for an actual release, but maybe this is part of the “patience bomb” going off before that happens. They know we can. Would it still be a worthwhile endeavor even if we know on some level it’s all marketing for the real fourth/next episode? Hell, yeah. They said it would be annoying and yet, here I am. I don’t care at this point. I’m serious about them owing us birthday cards though, and public acknowledgment-slash-apology if this goes big à la Kemp/KRATIDES/Geek Interpreter. There is hope here: after all, we only need to do it “… until I learned we learn that they were we are actually being allowed to have English TJLC confirmation newspapers.”

Or maybe the whole shebang has jumped mediums, and is now a Tumblr meta-project, so all of this is a moot point, and we are making the effort as we speak, and canon is now a swarm of  TJLC Tumblr blog posts. Still interesting, if only because it’s all of you who are making it so.

Caveat: I use “we” on eggshells, as someone who joined Tumblr like 3 weeks ago out of sheer frustration with S4 and a keen need to de/reconstruct it. Total n00b here, offering sincere apologies if I am stepping on anyone’s sense of belongingness. Willing to earn my own. Y’all are rock stars. I’ll be over here just yelling ARG a lot and feeling every cryptopuzzle keenly as a pinprick.

Tagging folks who seem to be engaged in the puzzle-solving or discussion thereof…and frequent use of the ARG tag. @teapotsubtext, @inevitably-johnlocked, @jenna221b, @kinklock, @tjlc, @johnlock-incorporated @rowanthestrange

I’ve never heard about those pin pricks! That is FASCINATING.

Something I’ve never mentioned or seen mentioned, but now might be a good time to do so – words have been misspelled frequently in this show, missing a letter each time. And sometimes letters get randomly thrown at us.

For example, “Piccadilly” was missing a “c” in TBB, Bond Air pointed out the missing “I”, “Mocha” was missing its “H” in TEH, “Captain” was missing the “A” in TAB, Moriarty had a “Y” drawn in blood on his lips in TAB, “IOU” was hammered home multiple times in TRF. Eurus went by “E”, Mycroft goes by “M”.

Could they have been leaving a message this whole time – pin pricks of their own – that if we deciphered early could break their code before they did it themselves?